The One You Feed - Scott Barry Kaufman on Living a Transcendent Life

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive scientist interested in the development of intelligence, creativity, and personality. He applies a variety of perspectives to come to a richer understanding and appreciation of all kinds of minds and ways of achieving greatness. In this episode, he and Eric discuss his book, Transcend: The New Science of Self Actualization. They discuss many ways in which we can go beyond coping and, instead, set our sights a bit higher to thrive in our day to day life, regardless of the circumstances. Scott Barry Kaufman shows us how the ordinary life is always, at its heart, the extraordinary life.You can find all of the most up to date crisis help & support resources that Eric is making available through The One You Feed by going to www.oneyoufeed.net/helpThe wisdom and practice of self-compassion is a foundational principle that Eric teaches and helps his private clients learn to apply through the 1-on-1 Spiritual Habits Program. To learn more about this program, click here.But wait - there's more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It's that simple and we'll give you good stuff as a thank you! In This Interview, Scott Barry Kaufman and I discuss Living a Transcendent Life and…His book, Transcend: The New Science of Self ActualizationThat the way you frame a question can influence how you feelHow to take the leap towards growth so that your focus is no longer on simply copingThe idea of spending our days in transcendent ways What it means to copeThe detrimental path of Experiential Avoidance The importance of integrating everything that’s happening right now within yourselfHow to view your personal growth opportunities while others are sufferingThe difference between those who are creative amidst uncertainty and those who struggle to be creative in the same conditionsBeing open to embracing new experiences by letting go of the need for controlGoing right to the heart of the fears that you have so that you can make peace with themThat we don’t grow all at once and in a linear wayScott Barry Kaufman Links:scottbarrykaufmanTwitterFacebookYouTube Channel“Demons on the Boat” VideoDaily Harvest: Delivers absolutely delicious organic, carefully sourced, chef-created fruit and veggie smoothies, soups, overnight oats, bowls, and more. To get $25 off your first box go to www.dailyharvest.com and enter promo code FEEDSkillshare is an online learning community that helps you get better on your creative journey. They have thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Get 2 FREE months of premium membership at www.skillshare.com/feed  Best Fiends: Engage your brain and play a game of puzzles with Best Fiends. Download for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play. If you enjoyed this conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman on Living a Transcendent Life, you might also enjoy these episodes:Mark NepoLinda GrahamSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is brought to you by our newest Patreon supporters. Patricia P, Ashley B, Chelsea S, Siobhan E, Kimberly S, Patricia H, C.D., Jen E, Ifioma E, Kenneth H, Gloria G, Bron, Alice J, and Teresa L. Thanks to you and of course thanks to all of our Patreon members. If you'd like to experience being a Patreon member and all of the benefits that come with it, go to oneufeed.net slash join. If you take the leap towards growth, you stop worrying so much about coping. about coping. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what

you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls.

This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. This is a therapy for black girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like. Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor.

What's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you tried to start meditating daily but can't seem to stick with it? I had that same problem too for a long time, which is why I've created a new guide called The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Seem to Stick with a Meditation Practice and How to Actually

Build One That Lasts. Just head over to our website at oneufeed.net and you can get free access to this helpful resource. Again, that's a free guide called the top five reasons you can't seem to stick with a meditation practice at oneyoufeed.net. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist interested in the development of intelligence, creativity, and personality. He applies a variety of perspectives to come to a richer understanding and appreciation of all kinds of minds and ways of achieving greatness. Today, Scott and Eric discuss his book, Transcend, the new science of self-actualization. Hi, Scott. Welcome to the

show. Hey, I've been looking forward to be on the show for a while. Happy to have you on. We're going to discuss your latest book called Transcend, the new science of self-actualization. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandfather. She said, well, grandfather, which one wins?

And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So much, so much. That parable is so important. In fact, the ideas around that parable have really influenced me a lot in studying notions such as what is the true self? Is there such a thing as the true self? And then is that true self the bad wolf or the good wolf? And how do we know what can we choose? Which is the true self?

Do we have any choice in the matter? I'm very interested in it from a humanistic psychology perspective. Humanistic psychologists are very interested in the tension between security and growth or defense and insecurity and growth and how those things are constantly battling for attention. I'm interested from an evolutionary point of view, that parable, you know, the extent to which we evolved to be naughty, you know, that's why we evolved because our genes don't, you know, don't care about the great life meaning. We do, but the genes don't care. The genes want to propagate it as fast as possible to the next generation. So we have all these hedonistic pursuits and fears of potential

survival issues take priority. So just so many different levels of analysis. I just think it's so wonderful that your podcast is around what some could argue the most important parable of them all. How did you first discover the parable? I first heard the parable somewhere in my first several months of recovery from heroin addiction. I just heard it in some AA meeting somewhere. And of course, coming out on the heels of heroin addiction, it was a pretty powerful story for me because then I saw the truth in it. It was like, well, this way I can get better. And here's the things I can do that will get me better. And these are the things I can do that will make me worse. And, you know, I often joke that like I wasn't even feeding the bad wolf

anymore. He was just eating me pretty much for for dinner, breakfast, lunch and dinner, for that matter, at that point. But that's where I first heard it. And so it sort of had kicked around my head for, boy, 20 some years before the show started. Oh, they're really so powerful. Yeah. So let's jump in here about your book. In the pre-show conversation, you and I were talking for a couple minutes and I said, hey, I loved your book. I love this stuff about transcendence, and I love this stuff about self-actualization. But one of the things a lot of listeners are struggling right now, and they're looking for ways to cope. And I said, can we spend a little of our time on ways to cope? And you said, let's discuss that on air. So let's discuss it.

I've been doing a bunch of podcasts and promoting, I don't like the word promote, but talking about my new book, Transcend, The New Science of Self-Actualization. And everyone wants to talk about how can we cope? How can we cope? And it's interesting because sometimes the way you phrase the question in your head, the framing influences how you actually feel. And this whole parable is relevant. If you keep feeding the question, how do I cope? How do I cope? You'll forget we're capable of thriving. Not everything in life is about coping all the time, even when it seems like it is. My research has shown us that if you take the leap towards growth, you stop worrying so much about coping. That question doesn't even become that prominent

in your consciousness anymore. So, I actually would argue that the best way forward in this time is to devote as much time in your day to more transcendent ways of being. flow, getting deeply immersed in something you love doing, watching inspirational videos, watching romantic comedies, or watching naughty comedies. That's fine too. The things that really give you a deep belly laugh because they're so wrong. I mean, that can be transcendent too. Get outside of yourself. Get outside of thinking so much about yourself. The more we can get outside of that self-rumination, I think that's the real key to moving forward. I've been asked the question so many times in the past week, how can people cope that I almost feel a little nauseous when someone asks me that question now. It's like too much, too much with the question. You can put on CNN

and they'll tell you plenty of things you need to be worried about. And you can watch that eight hours a day and not learn any new information than if you watch it five minutes in the morning. Check in. Okay, deaths happened yesterday. Okay, I'm done. Done for the day. Now I can, can I enjoy my day? Am I allowed to enjoy my day?

Am I allowed to have any peace? You know, like, am I allowed to uplift others and forget about it? And my answer is yes, you yeah i love that it makes me think we had uh mark nipo on the show very recently and one of the things that he talked about that really stuck out to me was this idea of yeah there's survival but a lot of times we make a god out of survival, and that ends up taking away our ability to thrive. I love that. I need to listen to that episode, obviously. What does it mean to cope? Let's philosophically discuss that a second.

What does the state of your coping look like? of like you're just holding back uh you know as hard as possible the barrage of crapola that's about to that wants to dump on you yeah and you're just sorry for the terrible analogy but and in any second it could crack yeah yeah coping doesn't seem like a very permanent solution to me the most permanent solution in my view has always been um i take a very act approach acceptance and commitment therapy approach, is not doing experiential avoidance, but just go toward the darn thing, you know, with bravery. You know, I remember there's a cute YouTube video, which I'd have to look up if you do show notes, I could send it to you, whatever, talking about the ACT approach,

where you're on a ship and you're steering a ship and you know where you want to go. You have the direction you want to go. You know, our direction in the coronavirus, the direction is to live our lives again like before, maybe even better than before. But there's these constant monsters underneath the hull of our boat that are just screaming at you like, stop. You know, you can't go further. You're not allowed to reach there. You need to stop. Go. You know, you can't go further. You're not allowed to reach there. You need to stop go and and what this video beautifully shows Is that this person realizes has the insight that well first he tries going and clobbering them all but they keep coming back

They're not gonna go away forever The best thing is to keep driving that boat with it all in your ear and be like, no, it's it's there I'm what I'm with it. I'm with it. I hear you all. I hear you all, but I ain't listening to you. I'm still going. I'm still going in the direction I want to go. And this applies, ACT approach, by the way, has been applied to people overcoming drug addictions. Stephen Haynes has pioneered this,

and he's a good friend, and we have lots of nerdy out sessions. I did a role play with him on my podcast, and I was like, Steve, I'm a loser. I mean, I don't really think I'm a loser, but I was role playing with him. I was like, I'm a loser. I have all these thoughts. I don't know why this is my role play voice, Vinny, but you know, I eat chocolate too much. You know, what can I do? And he helped me through this. And the best way through it is not through experiential avoidance. You know, it really isn't. So I don't know. Coping seems like a

boring outcome. How about we transcend it? Yeah. And you say that oftentimes the way to grow towards greater growth and transcendence is not by ignoring the inevitability of human suffering, but by integrating everything that's within you. Yeah. This is part of us now. This moment is part of us. And the question is, how are we going to integrate it, not get rid of it? I mean, it's a bad question to try to get rid of it. How can we integrate it? Well, a lot of people are integrating it really well. I just want to say I've been really impressed. I'm not surprised. I've always have positive faith in humanity, but I'm seeing so many people integrating their fears in such beautiful ways, creating videos that are going viral and uplifting all of our spirits to

healthcare workers. Sure, they have fear. What are they going to do? Just cope during the day or save lives? They're saving lives. They chose to save lives. You just have such a wide range of the human spirit right now on display like it's never been on display. Sorry if I sound too optimistic, but I think there's some positive outcomes in this situation. Yeah, well, I think there certainly are. And I think that the challenge with things like this, I always find, is that on one hand, difficult situations, we know they give opportunities for growth. Difficult situations can be some of the most fertile soil there is. And yet, oftentimes I'm hesitant to paint my growth in my fertile soil while other people are dying, right? It's this sensitivity to say, well, yeah, I recognize I can grow through this, but I don't want to only frame it as a growth opportunity for me because it's fairly callous

to people whose experience of this whole thing is very different than what mine is right now. But just because other people are suffering doesn't mean that you have to suffer, A. And B, you do care about other people, which is a very worthy goal. Not suffering is the best way you can offer value to the world. So I would put out those two postulates in response to what you just said. That is what a lot of people, if they had to boil down what they're dealing with right now, it's this massive uncertainty because what's coming? When is it coming? So what are some strategies for doing that, for reduce managing and embracing uncertainty? Uncertainty management is one of the most important skills we can learn in life.

skills we can learn in life and and many of us are are faced with having to develop those muscles for sometimes for the for the first time and in it to a great degree other others are faced with this moment of great uncertainty having spent their whole lives being neurotic messes you know and and and they're ready for it like you know i'm i'm ready like when this happened i was like you know come on really i got my oxygen tanks i got my you know i got everything right here in my living room wait i've been waiting my whole life for this moment well i have the the portable breathing oxygen things not the the whole not the full tank no no i got that i could pull it out of you know i got just you know i got you know the kind that that hikers you know buy right yeah so we each come to a different stages,

but I think that I'm not the, here are the five ways to hack your management uncertainty guy. Like that's not me. So I look at the science and try to think of what practices can help us move towards growth. And I found that this trait,

openness to experience, is a personality trait that we differ on, but we can all cultivate. And in my prior book, Wired to Create, one of the central points of that book was the thing that separates creative people from lesser creative people is that creative people get excited by uncertainty. They don't fear it. They have a different temperament and attitude. So in one way, my answer to your question is change your unproductive attitude towards uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean you're going to die. Uncertainty is uncertainty. The thing that drives people who are neurotic crazy is uncertainty, not something that's bad. In fact, research shows that people who are neurotic crazy is uncertainty, not something that's bad.

In fact, research shows that people who are neurotic AF, they tend to prefer the really dire outcome over a prolonged period of an anxious outcome. You know, you have a lot of neurotic people right now who are saying, give me the darn virus already. You know, like, come on, let's get it over with. Let's go. I can't. What's killing me is having to sit and deal with this uncertainty. Yeah. This is the thing, is going towards being open to the new experiences and embracing it and being like, you know, there's so much I can't control.

You know, letting go of that illusion of control. And some people do it through mindfulness meditation. That's really helped a lot of people to be able to sit with their thoughts and sort of unload their deepest anxieties away from their consciousness so they don't exercise really helps. But so much of it also is just changing your core beliefs, as they say in cognitive behavioral therapy, your core beliefs about the world. And maybe one of your core beliefs before this moment was that the world was safe and your core belief has been completely upended and you don't know what to do or what's right or what's wrong. And my response to that would be that your core belief before maybe was not right. Maybe you didn't realize, but every time you stepped outside across the street, there was an uncertain outcome there. Every time, you know, they did a lot more than you realized. I definitely think that's true. I think that this has brought to the surface things

that have always been true. We've always been profoundly out of control of lots of elements of life. And the fact that we thought we were controlling it all was just an illusion. I just think this has exposed some things that some people are already in touch with and maybe increased the likelihood of some of these things, but certainly didn't change our fundamental relationship to them, which is that, you know, again, to quote Mark Nepo again, I don't, I guess I've got him on the brain, but a long time ago, he talked about the terrible knowledge and the terrible knowledge is that anything can happen to any of us at any time. You know, it is, it's a terrible knowledge, but it's a hard truth that once confronted, we can sit with easier. Abraham Maslow, the humanistic psychologist,

argues in a lot of ways, going right to the ultimate unknown is the best thing and making peace with your mortality. I know it sounds not like a fun thing to do, but there are cultures where they make death such a prominent feature. They don't shun away from it or sweep it under the rug. They make people think about it and meditate on it. And they're much happier. Those countries are like the country of Bhutan. They're a very happy people. It's not like that practice has created more anxiety. In fact, just go towards your worst fears. Now, I'm not saying, hello, corona, come to me. That's not what I'm saying. But in your head, really meditate on your deepest fears and think, what is the worst thing that could happen? Even if you're dead, what's the worst thing that could happen? You won't suffer

anymore. Lots of Buddhist cultures have always recommended meditating on your own death, which actually your book is tremendous. And I have a preposterous number of notes for a 45 minute conversation. So there's no way I'm getting to all of it. So as you hit on something and it comes up, I'm like, well, I guess I'll take that one. But you described, I guess it's a game, but something called The End that you got involved in that basically was this confronting our mortality straight on. So I guess two questions there. A, tell us a little bit about that. And B, is that something that's available in the world to normal people? Or was it some experimental thing that you just happened to get looped into? Oh, I can find out.

I don't know what stage they're at right now with it, but I think you might have to live in Philadelphia to participate in it. Ah, okay. I should totally make a virtual version of it. It was an experimental theater production that I got involved in. Yeah, it was really interesting. I was going through an existential crisis at that time in my life, and it was really bad. Just right before I started writing this book and getting the idea for this book, and I was doing a lot of reading, a lot of reading of the existential humanistic psychotherapist, Irving Yalom, who wrote a great book, Existential Psychotherapy.

I started with that book. It was so good. It was so good. And then this game fell in my lap. And this game allowed me to, for I believe it was 30 days, fully confront my worst fears. And they would even give us role-playing situations. And it was scary because they were such good actors that it was real. But we would go in the doctor's, one of our missions, we would get a text from an entity called the end every day who would give us on a new mission and uh one of our missions i went to a doctor's waiting room it looked like a doctor's waiting room and they were like they're like doctor we'll see you now and i went into the doctor and the doctor's like so their test results came back and your cancer has really gotten late stage and you might only have a few days to live basically now i knew it didn't really happen but for some reason the the way they set they set it all up to plug to tug in your

your heartstrings and the actress was that we were supposed to really confront what would it feel like we role played everything we got we could try to get our finances in order we had things like if this was our last day on earth who could could we most want to talk to? And I just felt like a greater connection to everyone. I felt a greater sense of meaning. My fear of death really dissipated after that. It was just a really beautiful, beautiful game. Nå er vi på veien. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls, and I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations.

We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready.

Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really.

Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that you talk about in the book, and I thought this was really great,

and a lot of this book, you're talking about Maslow and a lot of his writings, and really going deep and unearthing a lot of things of his that most of us who have a passing knowledge don't know. But there was a phrase that I loved and he said he made it clear that human maturation was an ongoing process and that growth was not a sudden, salutary phenomenon, but is often two steps forward and one step back. And I just think that's such an important idea that we don't grow

all at once and we don't grow all at once and we don't grow in a linear way that are maturing in our growth. We go forward, we go back, we go forward, we go back. But I just think that's such an important idea. And I was really struck by it when I read it. Yeah, I think it's so important because people treat Maslow's hierarchy of needs like it's some sort of mountain you climb and that we're like, it's a video game, you know, where you reach a certain level. You say, do, do, do a video game, you know, where you reach a certain level.

You say, do, do, do level three now, you know, and you go into the next level and you don't ever return to level two. Maslow did make clear that we're addressing multiple needs simultaneously all the time. You know, we're, we can go right down the list of the basic needs and I bet you can give me a number from zero to 100, how much it's satisfied and none of them are going to be 100. And we're constantly falling backward and moving forward again.

And people who suffer from addiction can test this for sure. You're not a failure if you slip once or twice. It's not like you've gone back to level zero. Even after a full year of growth, if you have a slip, it doesn't mean you fell all the way back to step one again. It's actually part of the process. Despite some of our recovery programs over reliance on how many days you have, what you just said is an absolutely true statement. Yeah. Yeah. The more that we can remember that as we struggle, the better that this is a learning process. The other thing that you said pretty early in the book, you said, today, many people who are striving for transcendence, they're trying to hit transcendence without a healthy integration

of their other needs. You use examples like people who expect a mindfulness retreat or yoga class to be a panacea for trauma and deep insecurity. So to what extent do we need to sort of do these things in order, meet our basic needs, work our way up the hierarchy of needs, and to what extent can we jump in at different levels? It sounds like both at certain points. The key is it's all about integration. And we're a whole unit. We can't separate one of these needs from the rest of us. And if we do, that's when things run into a problem.

And to the chronically hungry human being who's not a vegetarian, everyone looks like a hamburger to them. You're walking around. That's all you're seeing. You're looking for food. If you're a vegetarian, you're looking around that's all you're seeing you're looking for food if you're vegetarian you're looking for where's the broccoli you know like everywhere you look i i'm desperate for broccoli and you don't care about anything else but broccoli and the same principle applies to being severely deprived of any of these just severely deprived of connection you come across to others is very quite needy which is actually a paradox it's very unfortunate it's a kind of catch-22 that the loneliest people tend to be shunned the most by society um that's a shame but you know you

you walk around being like please love me please like me i'll do anything you know for you to like me when you're chronically deprived and same thing with esteem if no one respects you at all any of the work you do in this world doesn't feel like it has any of an impact, you start to have an outsized demand for respect. And that can take different forms. That could take the form of the school shooter, the shy, introverted school shooter. Or it could take the form of, I don't know if you could think of an example of a grandiose narcissist, someone who is really obsessed with greatness or something. I don't know. I can't think of anyone like that right now, but maybe you could think of someone like that. They could take that form. I shall have power over the world. And so, this is really important to identify where you're most severely deprived. But I would say,

ultimately, it's all interconnected because we need to think of it like you want to get to the heights of your humanity. You want to reach your full potential. Well, treat it like a chapel. You know, you can't observe the most beautiful aspects of the chapel. The chapel needs a strong foundation or else it'll crumble. and you have to really make sure that that foundation of who you are is as strong and stands on as sturdy a foundation as possible so that you can really reach those heights. So they're all interconnected with each other at the end of the day. That's a debate that shows up in the spiritual world, particularly the parts of the spiritual

world that are more focused on non-dual awakening or awakening from the illusion of a self is, hey, are you more likely to awaken if you've met your basic needs, if you're psychologically healthy, is doing psychological work worth doing, or you just skip right by all that and just have a non-dual experience and you're on your way? It's a debate that that community spends a fair amount of time on. Are you in that community? I spend some time in that community in that I've had some mystical experiences, in that I'm a big believer in the Buddhist sense that this self is an illusion. Illusion is the wrong word.

It's not what we take it to be. And that there are ways of orienting towards the world which result in profoundly different orientations to what I call myself. So in that way, yes. But I wouldn't say that's the only world I'm in or the only place I'm interested in either. I guess if I have a spiritual orientation as I'm a Zen Buddhist, I study with a Zen teacher, I go on silent retreats. I'm pretty interested in this idea of awakening and have had some pretty profound experiences that have shown me what's possible. So yeah. Wonderful. I wanted to hear your personal experience. The closest I would come for

myself is describe myself as a Zen Buddhist as well. And I think that the humanistic psychologist Abraham Azov was deeply influenced by that. Did you get a chance to read the final chapter of Theory Z? Yes, I did. That state of consciousness that he was getting at the plateau experience, not the peak experience, I think is as closest as we get to ancient notions of Satori or some of the highest states of consciousness that one could achieve. And I think Maslow was striving towards that. I really tried to get us to it in

the book. It's kind of a twist ending of the book because you think, do I tell the listeners the twist ending? I want them to spoiler alert. You think that you're just going upward in some upward direction, like you've transcended this and that and that, and then you're like, you're going to end the book triumphantly with your purpose and then your full potential. And then you can start being a positive psychology coach and make millions of dollars. And then what you find in the book is that it actually ends on a different note, right? Am I right? Yeah.

That's not the note of which it ends. It ends on Maslow's realization, having gone upward, that upward trajectory, and then facing mortality, that the key to life actually was there all along in his backyard in the view of a tiny flower. Yeah. reading the trajectory of Maslow's own life and his personal journals and his correspondences with his East Asian colleague, U.A. Azrani, who many people might not have heard of in this generation, but who was deeply interested in these higher states of consciousness. And it seems like those states of consciousness are just, you're so profoundly touched by beauty and things that are as many schools can get. It makes me think of several zen teachings there's a zen teaching that i never get these things exactly right but it basically says like in the beginning the mountain is just a mountain and then the mountain is no longer a mountain and then after

that the mountain is just a mountain again you know and it talks about the fact we start from this ordinary consciousness we might have some of these peak experiences, some of these mystical experiences. And then when we're on the other side of it, we're back to like, well, it's a mountain. But it's a mountain in a different way. In the same way that you're describing in the book this plateau experience, which is we think of a peak experience as this thing. It's this peak experience we sort of shoot up to, and we're there. We come back down. thing. It's a speak experience we sort of shoot up to and we're there. We come back down. But the plateau experience, they're more enduring and they involve seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

And that's the thing I love about the Zen training for me is so great is because whenever I start spinning off and being like, well, I need that. No, it needs to be that. Oh, it needs to be over there. I need this. And it just goes, no, right here. Come right back. Your life right where you are with the ordinary things in your life has the capacity to awaken if you look there closely enough. I'm so glad. I didn't know that I'd be able to bond with you today over our mutual interests in this. I don't get a chance to bond over this. Everyone I talk to, so I don't take anything for granted. So I'm really blessed for this moment that we can have together. But I've really come to that realization, too, that so many things in life are pulling us. We need to do that.

I want this. I want that. Those are actually all the distractions. Those are the distractions. The truth lies within you right now without anything more anything added So much of the key of all of this is not adding stuff Being as present and aware to who you are at your deepest core in this moment

That's a profound realization and and it's something that you can forget that realization you can get it through meditation Sometimes you have these moments where you have that insight again, and then you forget it. And then you go back, like, oh, all of my work in your to-do list, everything, looking at your emails and getting stressed by your emails. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's interesting that that is true and that it's not immediately and often apparent. That's right. And that there are ways of being. There are things that we can do. And I, and I

love that was what a lot of the book talks about is this idea of a, of the B realm, right? This, this realm of pure being. And near the end of the book, you list like, I don't know how many it is, but like pages of these things that Maslow recommended as potential ways to spend a little more time in the B-realm. Did you like those things? I did. Some of them were great. Some of them were, yeah. He was just rattling that off there towards the end of his life. The other thing that was interesting for me in that section of the book was meta grumbles.

Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yeah. Can you share that idea a little bit? He went all out with the meta. So meta needs, we have meta needs, meta values, meta motivations, being motivated by things that are above our basic needs. He called meta motivations. Meta grumbles are a higher form. You know, he viewed meta as like higher,

a higher form of each of these things. So we can have lower forms of grumbles, which are like, oh my God, I'm hungry. Oh my God, no one loves me. Oh my god, what am I going to do? No one respects me. But meta grumbles are like grumbling and being completely dissatisfied with things that lie outside of yourself. I'm so frustrated that there's such a lack of beauty in my environment right now. The lack of justice, deficiency of meaning. Those kinds of concerns have a different flavor to them and can be viewed higher than our lower grumbles in the sense that they don't always need to be satisfied. They may never be. It might actually be good to be perpetually dissatisfied with those things.

That's why he said at the highest level of consciousness, we are beyond health and happiness. Such words don't have meaning anymore in our worldview. What it made me think of was I agreed with those metagrumbles. And then I also sort of thought, well, like you just said, there's not enough beauty or meaning. My metagrumble is often with myself. What I feel like is occasionally my lack of ability to perceive those things. You know, it's like, I know that there's meaning in beauty right where I'm at. And yet, I'll be damned, but I can't seem to see it today. I just can't find it today. Yeah.

And isn't that interesting that, like, the next day, you might look at the same thing and suddenly it looks beautiful to you? I mean, the same thing and suddenly it looks beautiful to you. I mean, the same thing. Yeah. Have you noticed that? Totally. Like, yeah. You might have great appreciation.

Gosh, I'm so lucky to have a mom like I have. And then the next day, you know, she nags you to death and you're like, don't see that. Right, right. Yep, yep. I don't know what your mom's like no comment yeah yeah no we're gonna Thank you. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking

about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present, and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready.

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and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got a line that I think is a really powerful line and it summarizes a lot of what we were talking about a little bit earlier and i guess still very much in what we're describing right now which is the self can be our greatest resource but it can also be our darkest enemy so you might challenge the even greatest resource part i feel like a lot of people in the buddhist world they kind of hate on the self and hate on the self. And I know you're not like that, right? No, no, I'm not one of them.

I don't think so. I think it's a concept that is actually fairly useful in a lot of ways. And that's why I said when I said, well, the self is an illusion, I was like, well, that's not really what I mean. Because no, on some levels, it's not. It's not psychologically an illusion. Right, right. It's a psychological mechanism. Yeah, yeah.

And I think there are moments where I feel like myself gets in the way and there are plenty of moments where I feel like it's a pretty useful thing to have a sense of. People who completely lack a sense of self, that's psychopathological. For instance, people with borderline personality disorder

report feeling no sense of self that's independent from others. They feel like they're always serving others and don't have any grounding. What I try to do in my book is have a good synthesis between Eastern notions of self-actualization and Western notions of self-actualization and have an integration of them. Because I think too much selflessness can become pathological, just as pathological, not more so than too much selfishness. So I try to mix it up. I talk in the book about healthy selfishness, for instance. I have a whole section on that. I talk about when you have a deep integration at the highest level, the word selfish doesn't make any sense anymore because what you do is good for you and it's simultaneously good for society.

So what does that even mean anymore for it to be selfish? Is there anything that you'd like to make sure we touch on or that you feel is important that we haven't covered on as we head towards nearing the end? No, please don't say that we're nearing the end. After playing that game, I don't actually want the end to happen. Well, I want to give a shout out to Swim Pony, who is the experimental group that did the end. First of all, I wanted to give their name a shout out so people could Google that if they wanted Swim Pony. But I'm so glad that we had a chance to cover the transcendence aspect and the plateau experience. I don't get a chance to talk about that all the time.

I just want to emphasize to people that this idea of what you feed grows stronger, well, that's backed up by evolutionary psychology. Robert Wright wrote a wonderful book called Why Buddhism is True. I don't know if you read that book. I did, yeah. We had him on. Oh, great. He must have loved the parable. Because the research does show that we have lots of parts of ourselves that are constantly fighting, as I'll call it, the civil war within,

and it's constantly battling within us. And we can integrate it, and we can have harmony among all these factions. A lot of that is about where we put our focus and where we put our attention. Attention lies at the heart of so much of our suffering. And I think that it's important to recognize that we can nurture what's good within us just as much as we can nurture what's dangerous or damaging to our health. But I would also say that this idea of good and bad is also a dichotomy that is transcended as a dichotomy transcendence. At the highest level of consciousness, they wouldn't even understand that parable. Evil and good would be integrated so that there'd be a higher unity.

Neither would make sense on its own. Ultimately, nothing would be viewed as good and bad by itself, that things like kindness can actually backfire and you can try to be kind to people who aren't ready to receive it and do damage to them. You could have anxiety and anxiety in lots of situations can be helpful. So I think that parable is very simplistic in categorizing, well, these are the things that are the bad wolf and these are the things that are the good wolf. And sometimes those things that are listed under the good wolf can be very bad under certain contexts. Things that are listed under the bad wolf can be great, like aggression can lead to growth in a Martin Luther King sort of way when integrated towards motivating you to solve an injustice. So that's why I really like

Maslow's framework of things that have a D flavor to it and a B flavor to it. Deficiency versus growth or being. And anything, I think nothing is either good or bad on its face. Everything can either have a D flavor or a B flavor. It includes aggression, de-aggression, authenticity. You can have authenticity that comes from a D level where you have to say everything that's on your mind, and you call that authentic,

as opposed to a B flavor of authenticity where you really grow and do things and make choices that are authentic, but they're authentic and will help you grow. I often think about that idea of, like any personality trait taken too far to one direction or the other tends to become problematic. But not just an extremity version, but just where is it coming from? Is it coming from what kind of motivation?

Yeah. Is it coming from motivation to satisfy a deep deficiency within your soul? Or is it being motivated by wanting to grow and to integrate and to help others? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's wrap up by talking about awe. You call awe the every person's spiritual experience. My colleague David Yadin called it that. Okay. Yeah. I like it. I really resonated with that description of awe. Awe is the state of consciousness where you feel reverence for something as well as maybe even a little apprehension of it. But it's just so beyond you. It's so beyond comprehension. You're struck by the beauty of it and the scope of it.

And my colleagues and I have been studying it because we do think that it's, out of all the transcendent experiences, it can be stripped of its religious connotations. Regardless of our religious belief system, we can all experience the same feeling of awe. We can all have that feeling and rally around similar experiences. You know, the mystical experience is not something that people usually divorce from religion, but I think awe is something that can be. It gets us close to it. Yeah, and I loved the discussion of there being two sort of main cognitive parts of it. One is the perception of something vast, and the other being the fact that it's hard to mentally process it, sort of put it into a box. That's exactly right. That sort of leads to this idea of a unitary continuum. Tell us what the unitary continuum is. Well, there's a lot of transcendent experiences we can have in our lives, and they differ in the extent to which there's a deep connection between self and world.

We feel some connection to something we're doing. We feel absorbed. If you have mystical experiences all the way on the right side of that continuum, that's like a oneness up the kazoo. I think that's an ancient Zen term. Oneness up the kazoo. Yeah. Yeah. You're one with everything, even to the extent where people want to check you in a mental institution.

But you don't need to be all the way there. You can be somewhere on the continuum. You can feel so inspired and have a peak experience, in Maslow's view, to see greater possibilities for yourself you never saw before or for others. Gratitude, the love experience is certainly on that continuum, including romantic love. Some people would argue that's some of the most profound experience that one could have so i i think that we can have a whole continuum of

transcendent experiences yep and i like that because i think it makes transcendence applicable at a lot of different levels instead of like transcendence is just this thing that's way out there no we all get flavors of it exactly right right. That's what I'm hoping to do. I hope to democratize spirituality a bit. Yeah, that's a worthy goal. I think so. I'm glad you think so. Yeah. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed the book a great deal and I really appreciate getting this chance to talk with you. Me Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge,

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The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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